


don't wait (we are the miracles)

by sprx77



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, But also Utopia, Dystopia, F/F, F/M, Gardening, Healing, Hope, It's solarpunk, Look I found a way to slip in Eco-Terrorist Obito if you squint, Love, Mechanical Wings, Multi, Naruto Rare Pair Bingo 2019, Polyamory, Rescues, Slice of Life, Solarpunk, Team as Family, Uzushiogakure | Hidden Eddy Village, Wings, kind of, mostly fluff tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 19:31:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19069198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprx77/pseuds/sprx77
Summary: Konoha is a smoke and smog nightmare on the horizon, so the freedom fighters of Uzushio don wings and work to tear it down, brick by metal brick.They stage more than a few rescues along the way.





	don't wait (we are the miracles)

**Author's Note:**

> It's my solarpunk fill for the rarepair bingo! This was a really fun ot5

Uzushio is a paradise. The sun is bright and glorious in the sky, shining down on pristine beaches. Every inch of land is terraced. The buildings stretch high and wide and crawl with grapes, vines, vertical meadows full of flowers. Window boxes hang from every sill, walls are interrupted with bolted planters like freckles, and every roof that doesn’t have its own community garden is covered with solar panels.

Color explodes from every corner, every nook and cranny.

It would be so, so easy to relax here, to forget the rest of the world and live out your glory days in perfect, harmony without a care in the world.

Some do—civilians, traumatized refugees, shopkeepers who prefer the day-to-day struggles of putting a smile on everyone’s face—and no one resents them, really.

But there is brown on the far-off horizon, brown and an ugly smear of orange, and the children of Uzu have never been known for their apathy.

So while they live in an unparalleled paradise, they are not idle.

No. The children of Uzu take to the skies.

Sakura sweeps down onto her balcony, landing with practiced grace. Her wings fold in around her, whirring and gears moving until they’re a small square of metal strapped to her back. She slides out of the straps, too, pausing to kiss her wife.

Ino waters the vegetables and laughs, pushing blonde hair out of her sweaty face.

“How’d the raid go?”

“Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to burn Konoha to the ground.” Sakura admits, settling her compact wings against the glass sliding door. Her decent had ruffled the flowering orange tree, and she pets its stalk apologetically.

It’s hardy, though, used to the wind and open spaces.

Ino grimaces.

“The civilians there don’t deserve to choke to death, dead without ever seeing the sky.” Her wife says, and Sakura knows. She agrees, even.

Deep in her heart she longs to bring every sooty child, every struggling housewife and crippled husband to the surface, to the _light_.

They all do.

Konoha is half underground, half metal canopy, an entire million-people city comprised of diesel and fumes. It was constructed so that even the trees are artificial, hiding the sky and churning out gaseous smoke as it burns coal for fuel.

Every year they mine deeper, filling the sky with darkness, and every year it creeps further.

There is an everpresent smog so thick in the air there that the average person doesn’t—can’t—last long breathing, and the life expectancy and birth rate drop to match.

Sakura takes a breath of fresh air, of free air, and feels the sun on her skin.

Ino bends down to smell the blooming lavender.

The glass door slides open and Sai steps out, blinking painfully in the light. He’s wearing long sleeves even in the mid-summer heat, because he’s so pale the sun will burn him quickly.

Ino steps up immediately, reaching into the folds of her apron and appearing with sun cream, quick to grab the stumbling man’s elbow and tug him into a brow-beating face massage.

“Do you _like_ sunburn?” She berates, but Sai looks to Sakura and his eyes are soft, wondering. He can’t help but stare, even after two weeks, at the plants. At the blue sky and the flowers, the wind and the beauty of air without grey-purple poison.

Every time he sees the outside world he looks lost and amazed, and it’s like a punch in the gut.

Obito had been the same way, crying and bleeding and burning but fighting off anyone who would drag him out of the sun’s light, furious and unable to process the anger he had at his home city, the evil in the world.

Tenzo was their most aggressive gardener, more determined than even the native-born citizens in protecting the environment of the island.

Sakura steps in close and he presses a soft kiss to her forehead, trembling only a little. Sai is one of the few who hadn’t needed a prosthetic or, more commonly, prosthesis. He needed only minimal reconstructive healing for his lungs.

And with him came valuable intel, the kind of inside knowledge that could help tear down the steel spires and metal leaves and rip out the sucking roots blighting the land.

She pressed her lips into his neck, to the pale skin there, and he wrapped an arm around each of their shoulders. Ino tucked the sun cream back into its home and leaned carefully into him, mindful of his still-frail stature.

Naruto landed on the edge of their balcony, waving with the brightest smile. The strokes of wind heralded his arrival, joined soon by Shikamaru.

Sakura snorted, disentangling from Sai to hug them both, kiss them soft on the mouth and let relief relax her shoulders.

“What’s the damage?” She asked their strategist, and he paused to kiss her again. She’d nearly been caught by a hurricane of fire during their mad escape, coal-burning hot. Naruto had proved ample distraction—he always did—and she couldn’t help herself from kissing him again, too, giddy to see him hale and whole.

He kissed back, all freckles and happiness. He smelled like sunshine.

Even Shikamaru’s serious grimace fell away in thank-fuck-we-didn’t-die relief.

Shikamaru looked to Sai and Naruto followed his gaze, eyes brightening impossibly further.

Naruto lacked Shikamaru’s restraint and darted forward with zero hesitation.

“Narut—” Sakura shouted, only to get smacked by a metal appendage.

“Your _wings_ ,” Ino hissed, diving as one swiped their potted catnip off its perch. Naruto shrugged out of the harness mid-leap, without even starting the withdraw function and suddenly they had twelve feet of flame-tipped-white painted appendages to dodge.

Shikamaru cursed, but even he was laughing, and Naruto shoved his whole face under Sai’s nose, beaming.

Sai put hands on his shoulders in pure self-defense, but he looked at Naruto as he looked at the sun: disbelieving and happy.

“Hello.” Sai said, half-shy, half-awkward. Sakura rolled her eyes, bullying heavy metalwork into its small form. Shikamaru helped, but he was still laughing, so she kicked him in the shin.

Ino sighed and fixed the disturbed planets, more protective over them than most, though Sakura spent her fair share of time tending to them.

“This is why we had to get the widest balcony in the city,” Ino complained, smile belaying her annoyance as she watched the quiet conversation unfurling before them.

Sakura forced the retraction sequence manually, ignoring the complaining whirs and how they were going to have to get his wings touched up by a supremely annoyed Tenten before their next mission.

“I thought it was so you didn’t have to pick between tomatoes and the arbor,” Shikamaru called her out, and Ino flipped her hair with a little huff. Then she grimaced, eyeing her dirt-streaked hands.

Sakura captured them between her own, adrenaline leaving her tired and sleepy now that everyone was back safe. Her shoulder-blades and chest muscles ached from the sheer muscle-strength her own, specially designed, wings required.

(The kind that let her carry passengers. The kind that let her _rescue_ , not just raid. She remembered the frenzy and horror and determination as she carried Sai from the fire, soot everywhere and lungs screaming for air.)

The boy next to Naruto was like a different person, clean and lovely and, like the rest, utterly loyal to the paradise he could hardly believe.

Sakura looked over her shoulder, taking in the colors and smells of her city, and allowed her wife to lead her into their home, amid the chatter and laughter of their boys.

Yes, they could stay here, safe and protected, too far away for the problems of the world to reach.

But they wouldn’t.

She grabbed three sets of wings, folded down into innocuous little squares of metal, on her way.

That’s the point of everything they’ve built.

Tear down the wickedness, the evil and the poison.

Burn the pieces and let the sky in, the light wick away the smoke and the dark.

Uzushio is a paradise. Her children could live out their whole lives with no worries, without caring about the rest of the world.

But they don’t.

They build wings to lift everyone up, and into the sun.


End file.
